I cover the video game industry, write about gamers, and review video games.
You can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there if you have any questions or comments you'd like to chat about.
Disclosure: Many of the video games I review were provided as free review copies. This does not influence my coverage or reviews of these games.
I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. I do not back any Kickstarter projects related to video games. I do not fund anyone in the industry on Patreon.

After the drive failed, Evolution Controllers began seeking out independent funding.

Then, recently, it appeared they were back on Kickstarter for a second attempt.

Only, something wasn’t quite right. Not only were the pledge reward levels confusing, they were significantly reduced from the original project’s.

In the earlier project, a donation level of $65 would get a backer one controller. For a $90 pledge you’d get a controller and a set of ear-buds.

But on the new ‘Drone DMND’ page which launched this August, donation levels had changed drastically.

For a mere $39 pledge, backers would receive a controller. But for $80 – more than twice that – you could receive two.

Alarm bells began sounding.

While all the pictures were exactly the same as the original Smart Controller project, plenty else about the DMND Controller project seemed different in subtle, and not so subtle, ways. It was less professional, for one thing. For another, it promised a ship date of November or December, something the original project never did.

And then – on the original project page – came this update, expressing shock and dismay that someone had stolen all the images, the idea itself, and had started a fake project under a new name (though the scammer did use the Evolution Controllers branding.)

Now the Drone DMND funding drive has been suspended.

How did this happen? How did a copycat project make it past whatever checks and procedures Kickstarter has in place to prevent this sort of fraud?

Without a clear picture of the behind the scenes workings of Kickstarter, it’s impossible to really say. I’ve reached out to the company for comment and will report back when I hear anything [note: I have spoken with a Kickstarter representative and will update when an official statement is made.]

For now, it’s unsettling to say the least. The scam had raised just over $21,000 since its inception, with over 350 backers. By all accounts, it wasn’t discovered until people excited about the project emailed the actual Evolution team about it. Nobody at Kickstarter noticed either the blatant similarities or the bizarre differences between the two projects. This raises serious questions about oversight at Kickstarter.

After all, this time the scam was suspended before it reached funding, but what would have happened if the project did fund?

This is a hypothetical, obviously, and so far – to my knowledge – no scam has actually funded on the site. To Kickstarter’s credit, the DMND project has been suspended. So even if it did slip past notice earlier, the company has taken action now.

What happens when an elaborate scam that isn’t a copycat shows up? The DMND scam was sloppy, but a clever conman could design a much more professional, legitimate, and original looking project and then walk away with a bunch of money and no product. Legal action could be taken at that time, but I can’t tell if the proper identity safeguards are in place, which could complicate any legal recourse.

There is a layer of anonymity to these projects that makes me nervous. While I’m happy to see games like Grim Dawn and Wasteland 2 find funding this way, there are so many other projects out there it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. If Kickstarter isn’t vetting these all properly, how can we tell the real Smart Controllers of the world from the fake DMND’s?

(Indeed, this could happen even with a legitimate product that simply never ends up getting made. Other projects have made promises that strike me as too big to keep. There are no guarantees any of these projects will ever complete, and no recourse for investors should they fail.)

What safeguards are in place to protect investment dollars? What investor rights to project backers have should a project fail, or turn out to be a fraud? After all, even the word “investor” is misplaced here: Kickstarter backers aren’t investing in the traditional sense at all.

At this time, the scam project remains in place on Kickstarter though donations are no longer open.

Without more accountability to investors, more transparency for projects, and better oversight from Kickstarter itself, this crowd-funding experiment may be headed toward disaster. It really is a beautiful idea, and I remain a big fan, but at this point the whole thing is beginning to look frighteningly like a house of cards. And news like this may be the first gales come to knock it down.

P.S. I don’t mean to be alarmist about this. Kickstarter, to their credit, did discover the scam and suspended the project. Out of 70,000 projects, none so far has been identified as a successful scam job.

Still, the enthusiasm surrounding crowd-funding at this point seems to increase alongside the money raised, and with more and more multimillion dollar projects funding on Kickstarter, the stakes keep going up. Higher stakes require increased scrutiny, and right now everyone appears to be altogether too much in the Honeymoon phase. But we’ve come a very long ways from funding $1,000 indie rock albums.

Update: Kickstarter responded to me via email moments ago:

“Thanks to the way Kickstarter works, no money ever changes hands unless a project is fully funded and reaches its deadline. There’s a “Report this Project” button at the bottom of every project page that allows anyone to share concerns that don’t surface in our initial screening. We look at every single message and respond accordingly. In this case the project was suspended as soon as we were alerted to it.”

I’ve asked them for a more detailed explanation of the vetting process and will update further if I hear anything else.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

The lack of transparency about Kickstarter’s review process for projects (I wasn’t able to get much out of them either when I talked to a rep last month) IS troubling. It’s great to say that the team reviews all projects according to specific criteria, but what are these criteria and how consistently are they used? My sneaking suspicion is that individual judgment calls rule the day and that Kickstarter relies a lot on potential funders to identify and report problems that they then investigate.

Yeah, they’re very opaque about that, and about possible backer recourse in the event of a hypothetically successful scam. This says to me that there are no strict processes in place to determine what passes the vetting process and that some of the potential problems and liabilities have not been plotted out enough. Lots of questions, and the stakes keep getting bigger.

Theoretically, one could call the state attorney general and have criminal charges initiated.

I can give you two examples to research that’s currently in progress (Didn’t happen on Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding site, it was small business sites), email me if you can and are interested. I’d post the names, but I’m wary of legality issues with making that statement on such a high-profile site.

Excellent article. A true testament to the power of “the crowd”, the driving force behind crowdfunding.

It would be impossible for Kickstarter (or our staff on our platform for that matter) to vet the intricate details of every project listed. One set of eyeballs can only see so much. BUT thousands of sets of eyeballs looking at the same thing? ZAP! Scam exposed!

Interesting article. We have helped numerous projects fund on Kickstarter and have researched plenty of projects to know the inconsistency of Kickstarter where some projects have funded with donations to others get rejected on rewards where others get accepted, etc

They are all over the place and think changing as they go weekly/monthly helps. It doesn’t and is one of my biggest pet peeves with Kickstarter. We have about 5 projects we will help support at Command Partners www.commandpartners.com and you can read my blog on Kickstarter and our start up marketing services as well.

Finally, crowd funding is here to stay so I agree with Eric and its in infancy mode. Waite til 2013 when the act is approved….

“There are no guarantees any of these projects will ever complete, and no recourse for investors should they fail.” Well as another person pointed out, donating money to a Kickstarter project is just that: A donation. It’s not an investment, and if a person wants to make money or invest in something they should put their money somewhere else. To me, Kickstarter is a way to support people and ideas that otherwise might not come to be due to the inability to find financing elsewhere.